I get really irritated when people compare the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to South African apartheid for a number of reasons. The first is that the same white supremacist ideology that drove colonialism and apartheid plays a large role in the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I view such arguments as a form of displacement. The second is that I really find wholesale comparisons of oppression irritating. But one of the ways I used to argue against this point is that Israeli Arabs were represented in the Knesset, something that was unthinkable during apartheid.
With that in mind, this is indefensible:
The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month's parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country's Supreme Court.
The ruling, made by the body that oversees the elections, reflected the heightened tensions between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.
The motion was put forth by two ultranationalist parties who are "accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist." I'm not sure how much validity there is to the charges, but in the case of the first two individuals, not entire ethnicities, should be held accountable, and the third sounds like an attack on free speech.
At the risk of not following my own advice, Frederick Douglass once said this in defense of women's right to vote:
All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and accountable being, is equally true of woman; and if that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise, or a hand in making and administering the laws of the land. Our doctrine is, that “Right is of no sex.”
Right shouldn't be of race or religion either. Occasionally, people point to acts like these to argue that said country is not a democracy, but it's actually far worse than that: A democracy that willfully disenfranchises its own citizens on these grounds implicates not only the government, but the people who have chosen it to represent them.
-- A. Serwer
